All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Ponte da Chen Cheong, Rua do Almirante Sérgio, Macao – former head office of the famous Kwong Hing Tai firecracker company founded in the 1920s by Chan Lan Fong and with a fsctory in Taipa. Chan Tai Kee (same family) made firework rockets…
A rare copy of Nigel M. W. ‘Harris’s Sampan Pidgin: Being a History of the Shanghai Rowing Club, (Shanghai: The Mercantile Printing Co., 1938). The Book remarkably remained in the Shanghai Rowing Club during the period of the Japanese Occupation and was recovered by the author from the Club House in May, 1949, shortly before Communists troops entered Shanghai. Harris, as well as obviously a member of the rowing club, was an RAF Squadron Leader in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
When Wallis arrived in Peking in December 1924 the city was in construction mode. Modern road surfacing was underway and the first tram lines, through Tiananmen from Qianmen and then along Chang’an, were laid in the forst half of the 1920s. This photograph (by American missionary Arthur H Smith) from around that time shows a steamroller laying road surface in the Tartar City….
Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson is available everywhere in hardback, e-book and audiobook now…
As you may well know the English writer and artist Denton Welch was born in Shanghai in 1915 where he spent much of his youth. I’ve talked about Welch’s writings on his Shanghai boyhood before (just put Welch in the search box here on the right), most notably in my collection Destination Peking (Welch once spoke a very interesting Christmas in Peking)….
John Swarbrooke Fine Art in London has a new exhibition on Welch – it runs till October 30. You can, however, see most of the paintings online here…
When in Macao I was always like to visit architect Julio Alberto Basto’s 1934 Casa Skyline on Penha Hill. I have to say it needs a clean and all the barbed wire is annoying but it’s still a classic… here’s this week and an old shot…
It’s on, with me leading the tour, this coming November 2…..
Email WildChina Travel directly at info@wildchina.com and specify “MiP tour on November 2nd”
Somewhat weird wax figures of Deng Xiaoping and Thatcher depicting their meeting at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People in September 1982 when they discussed the return of Hong Kong. The figures were produced by Pang Liming and Ai Desheng of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts and went on display in Beijing and at the Hong Kong Museum of History.
